Which at first impression the table appears to show:Australia 28.3% New Zealand 20.5%

Yay - New Zealanders rejoice; apparently our tax burden is not as bad as we feel it is... Until we read the third line of the heading which actually explains what we are looking at;Income tax plus employee and employer contributions less cash benefits as a % of labour costs

So in actual fact the taxation burden on an EMPLOYEE shown by these figures is overstated by the rate of both compulsory superannuation (0% NZ, 9% Australia) AND contributions by employer or employee to employer run superannuation schemes. So even without assessing the final part of the distortion Australia already has a lower taxation burden than us.

Unfortunatly having been an University statistics tutor, I can say it isn't just the half wits that do not understand stats. It is quite scary how many people have passed 2nd/3rd stage statistics papers who do not understand!

Still - I can't complain too much, peoples continuing misunderstanding of simple concepts is what lets me make money in the options markets :-)